Core Collapse
by Ninjagrrl
Summary: AU, featuring rogue black ops unit Akatsuki. Sasori and Deidara centric.


Core Collapse

Author's Notes- I was working on Afterdamp, a post-362 fic, and somehow this appeared when I was wondering how Akatsuki's different specialities might plausibly translate to a real-life setting (although it's still by no means ultra-realistic). It roughly follows events in canon, although not too strictly. Oh, and the title refers to core-collapse supernovae, one of the ways in which stars can die.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts, and no profit is being made. There's probably a couple of lines mostly taken from the manga too.

Warnings- Terrorism involves widespread death and destruction, deliberately targeting civilians. Deidara is canonically a terrorist, therefore he will not be running a kitten farm in this fic. When translated to a real-world setting, it will resemble actual events and perhaps be more upsetting than it is in canon. I have deliberately tried to steer away from anything too close to current events and conflict regions, but please be warned, if this is understandably a sensitive subject. However, just because it occurs here, it doesn't mean that terrorism is being glorified- I did try to get across that Deidara's reasons are far from justifiable or admirable.

- - -

_Explosion derails commuter train in Sussex, England, killing nine passengers and seriously injuring forty more. Terrorist activity is suspected-_

Akatsuki had analysed the previous explosions, and placed the bomber in a dilapidated warehouse near the line, only seventy metres or so from where the train had tore open like an aluminium flower and ripped a bloody smoking hole through the green English countryside.

_Estimated age,_ early twenties. _Former occupation_, bomb disposal expert and explosives prodigy. Began government work after being diagnosed as a pyromaniac at fourteen, piecing together experimental bombs in a garden workshop. _Currently_, terrorist for hire. No known affiliation. During a small civil war in Africa, he'd worked for both sides and shown no favour either way. Civilian homes, government organisations, passenger vehicles and army bases had all been targeted equally throughout his career. The only thing he seemed to steer from was historical buildings and famous landmarks. No interest in money. He'd take the payment and never came cheap, but it was the extent of destruction that he chose his clients for.

Akatsuki didn't know much, but they knew he would have to watch the explosion.

He saw them coming, and did not leave. He waited inside the warehouse from where had had watched his handiwork unfold in thirty seconds of fire and smoke and ruin. Lit by whirling fluorescent lights and the smudgy red glow of fires still burning, he looked more like a young London clubber on his way home than an international terrorist. His eyes were feverishly bright, his hair dishevelled, the purple paint on his nails chipped beyond repair. He dismissed all mention of Akatsuki. Deidara had no alliances before, and none appealed to him now.

Sasori turned away, displeased. This one would destroy himself and everything around him.

"You have no known affiliation," Kisame stated. "You're neither an anarchist, nor part of any recognised government or fringe organisation. Your targets _contradict_ each other. What do you really work for?"

For art, he told them, eyes as brilliant and heated as the blue flame at the heart of an explosion. No reason, no motive, no grudge and no purpose. He spun his artwork from wires and chemicals, from circuit boards and tiny computer chips. And then all the long, patient hours spent fusing together wires as delicate as insect antenna, all reduced to ruin for that one moment during the final explosion.

"Art is a bang," he concluded, his smile crooked and slightly unhinged.

"If I defeat you, then you'll join Akatsuki," Itachi finally spoke. It wasn't a question.

Deidara didn't hesitate. Something small and bright was in his hand, something that probably worked like a grenade but was ten times as lethal, something filled with chemicals that could level buildings and would burn until it had burrowed down into the bone. He leapt backwards, pulled his arm back to throw it, and at the peak, it simply fell loose by his side. Fingers began to uncurl slowly, one by one, his expression still triumphant at whatever victory he had seen in Itachi's bloodshot eyes. Moments passed.

"You lose," Itachi said, simply, as the illusion faded.

"You almost blew yourself up," Kisame said, faintly amused.

And Deidara's expression changed to shock as he saw Akatsuki unhurt, and he had to scrabble to deactivate the explosive before it detonated by his own side. Itachi watched, soberly, his expression unmoved.

"How?" Deidara's eyes had turned watchful, his expression pulled so tight and guarded that it was almost brittle and ready to snap, something simmering below it like an explosive that had no override. Perhaps this was the first time his artwork had failed him. Sasori made a low, faintly amused noise in his throat.

None of them knew for certain how Itachi managed it, and no one could pinpoint exactly _when_ he caught them in one of his traps. Perhaps it came from his hypnotic, dark eyes, a certain trigger word in his speech, or some wrong note struck in his low monotone. Neither could they tell when it was lifted. Perhaps Akatsuki were all still living in one of Itachi's many worlds now.

Something seemed to fracture in Deidara's expression as he stared at the proof of his own failure, and a second later, a line of mines seeded across the warehouse exploded, tearing concrete and metal to a hopeless jigsaw puzzle that could never be put back together. Hidan bounded forward, leaping straight into the heart of the explosions after Deidara. Through the smoke and dust, he could not possibly see the only clear path that would take him to safety, but it did not matter to Hidan. Either he didn't feel pain, or he felt pain and didn't care about it, and either way, he was useful to Akatsuki.

Hidan made it about ten feet into the smoke before he landed in the wrong spot, and was blown almost to the ceiling.

Sasori shrugged, and turned his back on the smoking warehouse. It would not be long before Deidara gave himself away.

- - -

_Twenty killed by landmines in Liberia, over land confirmed to be cleared over eight years ago. An enquiry has been launched-_

Zetsu had been uncomfortable with their next plan to meet with Deidara. He had been treated for his split personality long ago, and hospitals still left him troubled. But at least he didn't have to accompany them. The gang tattoos that split him in half made it too difficult to conceal Zetsu for less important missions. He seemed more at home breathing the humid, tropical air in his greenhouse, coaxing life from dry wooden seeds for Sasori's poisons.

Kisame hadn't came this time either, not right into the city where he would be seen. Only extensive disguises could hide the signs of the genetic manipulations he had undergone long ago, that had left him with the silvery eyes and gills of something from deep, cold waters.

Deidara was in isolation. The glass door to his room slid open with a faint, mechanical hiss, and he didn't acknowledge them as they entered. He was sat on the bed with his back against the wall, head tilted back and blonde hair spilling loose over his shoulders, glittering coolly under the harsh lights. He did not open his eyes. The surroundings were too white and calm and constant for someone like Deidara. Perhaps the world behind his eyelids was stamped with raw red skies and tattered plumes of smoke.

"Will you listen?" Itachi seemed unconcerned, as always. Deidara shot him a hateful look that was as brittle as thin ice over deep waters, and Sasori knew there would always be a scar there from where Deidara's art had been thrown into doubt.

"Who," Deidara asked. "is Toshio Kinjo, and why am I being held in his name?"

Kinjo hadn't existed before last week. The computer records had him down as a convicted pyromaniac. Most of the fabricated therapist notes were taken directly from Deidara's own, long-deleted files. It would not be long before someone made the connection, and worked out who Deidara really was. The bombings would stop while he was being held inside.

Sasori was already growing impatient, wasting too much time on a new member who would probably be dead in weeks anyway, but Deidara didn't think about it too long. He had never cared too much who contracted his work, so long as he had a free rein with it.

Deidara found Sasori within an hour after they had taken him from the hospital.

"I need something to counter that hypnosis, yeah?" Deidara said, tapping one finger against his cheekbone, just below the eye. His expression twisted, a moment of fragility flickering through, before it smoothed over into contempt. "I can't work with someone like that."

It was nothing to Sasori. All he cared about was whether he could work effectively with his new partner or not. He built the scope with the rest of the new upgrades he had been working on, something to bypass the occipital lobes altogether, and feed in ready-assembled information, filtered through impartial circuits. A machine had no will of its own to subjugate.

Deidara lay conscious but still as a puppet, one eye fixed on the white surgical lights while the other was locked away behind metal. Sasori was unused to working with living flesh, but his hands did not falter as he sank a tiny drill bit into Deidara's temple and passed in near-invisible filaments finer than strands of spun sugar.

"Cool," Deidara had remarked, using the scope to zoom in on something hundreds of metres away. He didn't seem to care that one entire eye was now lost behind metal, that he'd sacrificed his human appearance like most of Akatsuki.

It had been twenty years since Sasori had last seen through human eyes. He didn't think he'd ever shared Deidara's enthusiasm, even when he had first saw the world through a bionic scope.

- - -

_Fires sweep Guangzhou, China, as a total of ten incendiary devices are planted within residential areas. Current death tolls are estimated at over six hundred-_

"I need explosives," Sasori had said. He had his own, but he guarded his art jealously and would not risk having the smallest piece of his puppets found if his cover was ever blown. He needed explosives that were small enough to conceal with the rest of the electronics, remotely activated, enough to destroy the puppet and anyone in the immediate vicinity who may see its secrets.

Deidara nodded absently, and didn't answer, still humming contentedly to himself as he pieced together something that seemed to be spun from little more than light and shadows. The tiny wires trembled in the breeze as Sasori entered. They were fused around the explosive core, shaped into the graceful outline of a bird in full flight.

The explosives were ready in days. With that done, Sasori reluctantly let Deidara into his workshops.

Deidara followed enthusiastically, and stopped, startled, as they entered the innermost chamber and the figure he had always known as Sasori went suddenly limp and unresponsive at his side. The head fell forward, light gone from its eyes as it stood still and obedient like the doll it always was.

Sasori's innermost room was almost entirely walled with computer screens flickering too fast for a human to coordinate. Thousands of tiny cables spun around each other like razorwire lace to the centre of the room, carrying more data than a human mind could ever process. And at the centre of the spiderweb, Sasori moved within his cocoon for the first time in years, lifted his head and reached up to remove the helmet that covered most of his face and carried the information from up to three hundred puppets at once.

He regarded Deidara coolly, knowing his true appearance would surprise the rest of Akatsuki. He still had the sober-eyed, watchful features he'd had at fifteen. Sasori could take the appearance of anyone in the world, and yet, he'd kept his own. It was not out of sentimentality. Sasori never saw his own reflection, never had to when his appearance remained constant no matter how many years passed.

"This is really you, yeah?" Deidara asked, fascinated.

Sasori didn't answer as he disconnected himself. He rarely bothered. One puppet was much like another when it came down to it, and it was just as easy to use his main Akatsuki puppet to work on new creations while he remained here, coordinating twenty lives at once. But when he stepped down, his joints had not stiffened through years of immobility; he moved more fluidly than he had ever done as a human as he found the puppet he was currently working on.

Deidara wandered through Sasori's collection, ignoring the work to be done. There were several corpses still unprepared in cold storage, their veins filled with supercooled liquid to preserve each cell while he carved out the surplus tissue in wafer thin slices, and refilled it with circuit boards. There were hundreds more completed, and perhaps twenty of those in action at any one time. Mostly famous politicians and military strategists, snatched one by one and patiently reconstructed from the inside. The rest were packed in storage, waiting to be awoken. The information packed into the whorls of their preserved brains never decayed. Their strength never faded and their reflexes never dulled. Famous beauties kept their looks as decades passed.

Sasori's lips thinned as he heard Deidara rummaging through a box of perfectly painted eyes that could see further and record more than a human eye ever could, that picked up extra wavelengths of light and saw the world in a spectrum of colours that no person would ever know.

"You're quite an artist, yeah?" Deidara conceded and nodded, unconcerned, when Sasori told him to get to work.

Deidara opened the case he had brought and began to fit the pieces together. His pale, restless fingers moved surely through a tangle of wires and tiny circuit boards, seemingly without thought. One soldered wire carelessly yanked from place, one live wire whispering against another, and even Sasori's immortal puppets would be blown to ruin. He clipped in tiny vials of chemicals that would level a building if they ever met, barely a teaspoon of liquid between them. No mask as he worked, and Sasori watched the faint, silvery vapours shifting inside their containers, and wondered how many toxins Deidara had breathed in over the years, and what they had done to him.

"You're done, yeah?" Deidara said, straightening up. Three loose wires remained for Sasori to attach his own detonation device. "White to trigger, blue to deactivate and green to permanently shut down."

He didn't turn to leave the workshops, and paused, fascinated. "So you're human-"

"No," Sasori said, bluntly. He began settling the explosives into the abdominal cavity he had prepared earlier. Deidara tilted his head, examining the robotic insides thoughtfully.

"Do you have a heart?"

"Unnecessary," There was no blood left in his system to circulate.

"What about your mind?"

"In a way," That had been the longest, and most difficult operation, to slowly transfer his own mind into digital form. But it had been possible. Thoughts were nothing more than electrochemical activity, and a machine could handle far more data than the human brain ever could.

Deidara paused, and then asked the question that sometimes drifted through Sasori's own, mechanical mind. "When you changed over to a computer, how d'you know whether you're really _you_, or just an AI program you made?"

"It is irrelevant," If the real Sasori had died somewhere in that transfer, it made no difference now. He shared the same memories, the same knowledge and personality. If necessary, he could create a thousand back-up copies, and each new version would never know that they were not the original.

"Can you feel this?"

Deidara's fingers drifted over his forearm, and Sasori flinched automatically. All his puppets preserved some sense of touch; it would be impossible to move fluidly without constant feedback from the world around them. But it had been almost twenty years since he had touched another without latex between his own skin, and a hollowed out corpse. All he picked up were the dull, distant messages sent from his puppets as his politicians shook hands, were clapped on the back, publicly accepted a kiss from a lovely wife who never knew that her lips brushed over hollowed-out chambers where her husband's mind had once been cradled.

"Stop that."

Deidara's eyes were too close, too bright. Sasori meticulously hand-painted the eyes for each of his puppets. He patiently replicated every jewel-bright striation and every fleck within the iris. He recreated each almost-invisible vein and the wet bluish gleam over the sclera. His puppets did not have the fixed, lifeless stare of doll eyes. He recreated the tiny, constant sacchades, the sudden pupil dilations in darkness, the nervous flicker of eyelids like leaves trembling in the breeze. But he couldn't recreate this brightness, the feverish brilliance of white phosphor flame, of the burning heart of a collapsing star.

- - -

_Coordinated explosions simultaneously collapse ten public buildings in Moscow, Russia. Current death tolls are estimated to stand at over three thousand-_

Deidara's hair was full of the smoky smell of fireworks, burned out sparklers and crisp autumn leaves raked up into a bonfire. Too close to his explosions again, never content to watch from a distance no matter how many times Sasori upgraded his scope so that he could see the damn explosion up _impossibly_ close, see it in every wavelength of light ever discovered, replay it over and over again if he liked. Deidara had to be right in the heart of it, close enough to feel the rush of superheated air as a fresh wound was gouged into the earth.

"Your own fault," Sasori growled, as Deidra limped at his side.

Deidara spat blood miserably, by way of answer, and Sasori winced at the brilliant red spatter. He could almost forget how messy and unpredictable human forms could be when he had lived in clean, hollow husks for decades.

"It was worth it," Deidara said dreamily, not unconscious yet. "It was beautiful, yeah?"

Sasori didn't answer. One minute of light and fire and sound, and then there had been nothing but smouldering fires and blasted ruins filled with the red jumble of corpses. He had found little artistic merit in it.

"That's how I want to die," Deidara mumbled, after Sasori was silent. "_Bang._ Don't want to fade away."

"You're not dying," Sasori said, losing patience with Deidara's nonsense. Deidara stumbled, made a small, pained noise as he was caught, and went slack against Sasori's shoulder. A second later, and Sasori looked down to see Deidara's hand splayed over where his heart should be.

"What are you doing?"

"You do have a heart," Deidara said, vaguely. "I felt it."

"Nonsense," All his puppets simulated pulses, just as they appeared to breathe and blink. "Be quiet. You need to see Kakuzu."

"And while we're there, let's ask him to give you a heart, and me a brain," Deidara's giggle was high-pitched and slightly unbalanced, and it cut off abruptly as he passed out from blood loss and landed messily on the floor.

Fortunately, Kakuzu's surgery was perhaps the best equipped in the world. If he had been so inclined, he could save anyone so long as their heart still beat, and perhaps bring almost anyone _back_ if they were found quickly enough.

There were other, more serious wounds, but most crucially for Akatsuki, shrapnel had shattered most of Deidara's elbow. Kakuzu seemed unperturbed, turning to his collections to find a segment of arm to replace it with altogether. Kakuzu's cold storage units contained every replacement organ or limb that may ever be needed, and in the tanks, two or three brain-dead specimens floated almost peacefully, kept alive until he needed to harvest the more delicate tissues.

It took almost twenty four hours to achieve what should have been impossible, and reattach every tiny nerve and sinew, everything needed for Deidara to work within the minute world inside his explosives.

"You should have been a surgeon," Kakuzu commented, flexing Deidara's fingers, satisfied that the surgery had been a success.

"Cool," Deidara mumbled distantly, raising his bandaged arm experimentally, and then the light in his eyes was snuffed out as he finally went limp. Sasori half-dragged him to his room, only taking enough care to stop the new stitches tearing apart.

Deidara's rooms were scattered with the delicate metal skeletons of half-constructed explosives, the walls lined with refrigerators to hold chemicals too unstable to unfreeze, and metal crates containing things too dangerous to ever see sunlight. And in the middle of all this, Deidara apparently slept, his violent dreams kindled by air heavy with the traces of a hundred different toxins.

"Careful, yeah?" Deidara said, opening his one human eye as he accidentally bumped into a tall crate. Sasori steered him away.

"What's in there?"

"White phosphorus," Deidara gave him that crooked smile again.

When white phosphorus begins to react, it will not stop burning until all oxygen is consumed and it chokes and suffocates. The chemical burns keep eating through soft tissue, burrowing into the skeleton, and from there, the poison will spread through the system and cause massive organ failure. Sasori could approve of that.

- - -

_Simultaneous explosions hit fifty cargo ships at 10:32 am, GMT. No survivors are expected-_

The last explosion came three years after Akatsuki were formed, one final act to forever seal shut the tenacious hold they had already wrapped around the world.

Over two months of constant work for Deidara at the end, mostly working underground through the passages and tunnels that ran like veins through all major cities, Kisame taking over where it was too flooded. It had taken over a year to prepare enough explosives for this one, and they were packed in a thousand different locations like seeds, ready to blossom in one minute of light and fire.

"Three hours," Kisame's voice crackled over the radio on the last day. They had meticulously planned the escape route, planned _four_ of them just in case something went wrong. It would take a maximum of an hour to leave the city, and the rest spare change to get to a safe distance for Deidara to watch his show.

"Yeah, see you later," Deidara said absently, sounding unconcerned. His voice was distant, headset propped against his shoulder as he carried on working.

They tried again, forty minutes later. There was no answer for five minutes, and then they finally heard the quick, excited sound of Deidara's breath crackling and hissing through the static as he paced from explosive to explosive, sounding impossibly far away.

"We carried out simulations," Sasori growled, snatching the radio. "You said eighteen hours would be enough for these last few."

"Changed my mind, yeah," Deidara's voice was quickening. It briefly disappeared as he moved further away from the radio. "It needs more. It's got to be something special. I'm going to leave scars in the earth-" voice fading, rising and falling in pitch. "like no one's ever seen before-"

On the second hour, Sasori called himself. Deidara was still talking, although not to any one of them. There were long pauses where he paced too far from the radio, or where his voice rose too high and agitated to hear through the crackle of background noise.

"_Art_.. is an evolution.. you add yours piecemeal, one new upgrade at a time," his voice disappeared altogether in a flurry of white static. "You can never reach the endpoint.. but it's always working towards one masterpiece.. a state of _flux-_"

"What the hell are you talking about, Deidara?"

"_Stars_," Deidara said, distractedly. "only shine because they're in a constant state of change.. throwing out stellar wind fast enough to stop itself collapsing inward," more crackles broke up the next part. "to get the nebula, you have to have the _explosion-_"

"Leave it," Sasori ordered. There were more than enough explosives there for their purpose. Deidara had been working on this one before he even knew it, every explosion little more than a test run for the final masterpiece, and now there were over a thousand of his perfected explosives, linked up to enough fuel to blow square miles of land to dust.

"Can't," Deidara sounded breathless. "It's going to be the first time anyone's seen an explosion like this, yeah-" and his voice was lost again. "-and the last time. No one's ever going to see anything like this again."

"Are you intending to remain there?" Kisame's voice was calm and unmoved.

"Can't rush _art_," Deidara said, talking more to himself. His laughter was high, almost nervous, but it was excitement that filled it, not fear. "Nothing can stop this now, yeah?" His voice faded again, but he was still close enough for the radio to carry the agitated sound of his quick, shallow breathing. "Not Itachi. Not anyone. It's _unstoppable_."

As the third hour approached, there was one last call that went unanswered. The radio signal indicated that Deidara had made it above ground, somewhere impossibly high in one of the tallest city buildings, waiting for his artwork to unfold below him. The radio played back a few seconds of the tranquil hush of summer skies, too high to be disturbed by the distant buzz and drone in the streets below. A few seconds later, the signal disappeared as the horizon split open.

Only Sasori saw it, because the light would have blinded any human if they tried to watch as Deidara's explosion wiped an entire city from the face of the earth.

They had travelled over the horizon three times since they left the city behind, and the ground still buckled and sank underneath them with shockwaves that threatened to crack the earth open to its burning, molten core. The skies split open with a sound like Judgement Day as for thirty seconds, the summer sun was drowned out with the pure, searing light of a star gone supernova.

And then the skies were flayed open by fireballs and mushrooming clouds, painting them raw red and black with smoke and soot and debris, and if Deidara had survived another year, perhaps one day this would be the darkness of a sky gone to nuclear winter. The final tremors shuddered and died deep in the wounded earth, and then the dust began to rain like the sandstorms in Sasori's homeland. Black dust from ground cement and steel and thousands of lives instantly vapourised, and somewhere in that fine black rain was Deidara, scattered to the winds.

"That's it, then," Kisame said, emerging from hiding to watch the last of it, and Sasori turned away from the phosphor-white flames cauterising the horizon, from the hopeless screams and secondary explosions, from the smoke-filled air which failed to bring tears to his bionic eyes.


End file.
